2019/11 Australia trip - Tower Hill |
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Tuesday November 26th
It was cold, wet, and windy as we drove to Halls Gap to do a little shopping and get some postcards for the grandchildren. We were heading south through Dunkeld and Koroit to Tower Hill, an inactive volcano that’s now a state game reserve. While it was active it was a maar volcano, experiencing multiple explosions when lava entered the lakes in the crater. From our previous visits we knew it was a reliable place to find koala bears.
We met our first koala on the entrance road, a mama with baby. Unfortunately they were hard to see, directly above us, and we 
kept going back to see if they’d moved to a more convenient spot. But they didn’t move much.
Tower Hill is also home to emus. Unfortunately, people like this guy feed them, with inevitable results. These emus invited themselves to our picnic lunch and had to be repelled. Emus can be very pushy when they are hungry.
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Tower Hill (5.49) |
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Sandie and I walked the Lava Tongue trail, a boardwalk across one of the lake’s wetlands and we found another koala family, a little easier to see. Koalas are nocturnal so they are mostly asleep during the day, waking up and moving about in late afternoon.
The lake was busy with coots and black swans; black swan cygnets are grey, just like white swan cygnets.
We were going to stay the night in Warrnambool, the nearest big town. The visitor’s centre found us a place for the night for $200. It turned out to be a two story house, with 4 bedrooms, 2 ½ bathrooms, a kitchen and living room with dining for eight, a patio, balcony, and garage. In the off-season, I guess, low rent is better than no rent.
We drove to an RSL servicemen’s club on the seafront road for dinner and we enjoyed our bangers and mash.